HIS purchase project: preliminary report.

Abstract

The KAGes (Krankenanstaltenges.m.b.H) is a company, owned by the state of Styria in Austria, which operates 20 hospitals with about 8,000 beds and 14,000 employees, serving a population of ca. 1.2 million people. KAGes is on its way to purchase a new hospital information system (HIS) for it's hospitals. Within the strategic IT plan and the "System Structure New" (SSN) project a methodology was developed, for making an effective HIS purchase. Several steps of this project are described in the paper: request for product information, evaluation of vendor proposals, product presentations, test site evaluation, reference site visits and selection of vendor finalists. The authors present the internal project management methodology, including the structure of the project team, project information management through intranet, criteria for different steps of the evaluation and evaluation site organization. Four major HIS vendors with leading HIS products qualified for this stage of the project (evaluation site). About 60 teams with 400 members (end users and IT-experts) have assessed all the products installed, during one or more, repeated, test sessions. The decision on which new HIS to purchase will be based on the recommendations derived from this evaluation. Two pilot installations (one general hospital and one teaching hospital department) are planned for implementation in the year 1999/2000 and subsequent roll-out (including substitution of the legacy system) is scheduled until the year 2003.